Photo/Illutration Few people use the Marunouchi South Exit of JR Tokyo Station on the morning of Oct. 12. (Shiro Nishihata)

As massive Typhoon No. 19 approached the Kanto region, hotels and inns in popular tourist destinations were deluged on Oct. 12 with cancellations at the start of a three-day weekend.

The stoppage of train service due to the typhoon left travelers with no way to reach their destinations.

East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) announced that most lines were halted from the morning of Oct. 12.

The situation was also very serious for municipalities in Chiba Prefecture, including Tateyama, Minami-Boso and Kyonan, which were still reeling from the effects of Typhoon No. 15 that hit the area in September.

Some evacuation centers in those municipalities had reached capacity by the morning of Oct. 12, forcing local officials to open other centers.

As of 8 a.m. on Oct. 12, 773 residents had already evacuated in Tateyama. One community center in central Tateyama that had been converted to an evacuation center had residents resting in the hallways of the facility.

Ayumi Suzuki, 38, who lives nearby, evacuated to the center with four other family members.

“I thought it would be safer at the evacuation center, but I never expected to see this many people,” she said.

Ito in Shizuoka Prefecture faces the Sagami Bay. Strong winds and rain hit the city from after midnight on Oct. 11.

Ito Port is a popular destination for fishermen on weekends, but there were no people braving the high waves that crashed onto the port.

A Seven-Eleven Japan Co. outlet near the port had few customers and a male employee said, “Business will likely be slow today.”

The Ito Marine Town road station commercial complex was closed on Oct. 12. Doors to the facility were reinforced with adhesive tape to prevent the wind from cracking them. Rags were set up at the bottom of the doors to keep out water.

Ito is also known as a hot spring resort, but hotel operators said many reservations for the weekend had been canceled.

“To be honest, it is very damaging for those of us in the tourism industry to have a typhoon hit, especially during a three-day weekend," said an employee at one venerable institution. "Sales will plummet.”

Some people at JR Shizuoka Station were at their wit’s end because not only had Shinkansen service been suspended, but local lines were also not operating.

One 36-year-old woman took an overnight bus from Osaka and arrived at the station early on Oct. 12. She had planned to visit the home in Fuji, Shizuoka Prefecture, where she grew up.

“I asked my mother to pick me up with her car, but I am worried because traffic has been suspended on some roads,” she said.

According to Shizuoka prefectural government officials, as of 10:30 a.m., a total of 3,027 people in 1,629 households had evacuated in Ito, Shimoda and Hamamatsu.

Many of the lines using JR Tokyo Station had suspended operations by the early afternoon of Oct. 12 so one station employee said the number of station users was only about one-20th of normal weekends.

A family of four from Australia was heading for the Narita Express platform to go to Narita Airport. They were not scheduled to return home until Oct. 14 and initial plans had them sightseeing in Kyoto on Oct. 12-13.

But with the Shinkansens stopped for all of Oct. 12, they decided to head to the airport while they could.

The father said hotels in the Narita area were all booked so they might have to spend two nights at Narita Airport.

A 63-year-old woman from Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, was in Tokyo because she planned to attend the Japan-Scotland Rugby World Cup match in Yokohama on the evening of Oct. 13. But event organizers will only decide whether to proceed with the game on the day of the match.

“I would have wasted the effort to come here if the match was canceled and the hotel fee would also be wasted,” she said. “But there is nothing I can do about that.”